 From the VMware campus in Palo Alto, California, it's theCUBE, covering women transforming technology. Hi, Lisa Martin with theCUBE on the ground at VMware in Palo Alto, at the third annual Women Transforming Technology event. We're excited to welcome to theCUBE Caroline Hubbard, an analyst at LinkedIn, and the founder of ThreadBuried Caroline. Nice to have you here. Thank you for having me. So you, as young as you are, you're a speaker at this event. You spoke in the emerging leaders track. Tell me the name of your session and what some of the key messages were that you delivered today. Definitely, my session was called Stand Up, Stand Out, how to become an advocate for change in the workplace. And my session detailed sort of my experiences, thus far, navigating corporate America, not only as a woman, but as a person of color, and some of the really eye-opening experiences I've had in terms of the toxic cultures that are rampant in our organizations across America. And through this experience, I learned really valuable lessons. And two of those lessons are that your sort of performance and how you're perceived can only take you so far in an organization. Ultimately, if you're not in a place that values your identity or values you for your differences, not just in spite of your differences, then your chances of success are gonna be limited. And if you allow toxic cultures to eat away at your own perception of self, then you're gonna be in even more dangerous position. So I sort of talked about how I learned those lessons and provided a framework for which we can all go back to our companies and bring awareness to issues that are affecting underrepresented people. How did you hear about women transforming technology? Yeah, so I've, since I've moved here 10 months ago, I've just been taking the city by storm, networking, joining lots of women's groups to just try to find women with similar experiences as me. You know, I'm from the East Coast, so I don't really have that many friends or a network out here, and that's what I wanted to build. And so through one of the women's groups I'm associated with, I was speaking with a friend who was like, well you should check out this conference and so I did that, I went online and I connected with one of the program leads here and we were able to talk a little bit about my experience and I was invited to speak. Fantastic, and now you can say you've spoken at an event where Laila Ali spoke this morning. I know, that's an honor to say that. She was so inspiring because you look at a woman like Laila who you think is just born with confidence and courage and she talked about how a lot of that is too very innate, but there are times where she kind of has to recheck, kind of do a gut check and say, all right, I feel like I'm kind of knocked back a bit. I loved her recommendations for what the Boy Scouts, what always be prepared, but that preparation is really key. Have you found that to be something that helps you kind of harness your inner mojo, your inner confidence to be able to, whether you're speaking at watermark or you're here. Absolutely, and I come from a performing arts background and so I spent a lot of time on stage and I just found that throughout my life, being on stage energizes me and being able to connect with people and be fully transparent is something that's really refreshing. But with that comes a lot of preparation and I've spent hours, actually last month, when I did a similar talk, my mother and I were up until 5 a.m. the night before a big speech, just working and making sure it was perfect and deliver the right message. So I definitely agree, preparation is always key. It helps you feel confident, but like she said, there are times when sort of preparation isn't enough and you just feel a little bit unprepared or unconfident and that's okay. What really matters is how you sort of bounce back from those instances in which you don't feel as confident. I agree, I felt very validated with Alayla Ali Singh. Sometimes I don't always feel my best. So tell me a little bit, before we get into Thread Bread, which I want to talk to you about, a little bit about this program that you're in at LinkedIn where you get to, in finance, you get to work in different parts of the business. Yeah, it's a really unique program. It's a two-year long program for students or for people directly out of college that gives you a lot of exposure across the company and so it's technically under the business operations organization. So your first year is split between rotations and sales operations and business operations and then the second year you can have more of an elective choice where you can sort of dabble in product marketing or corporate development. So it's a really unique experience and that allows you to see multiple parts of the business and currently I'm on the consumer product growth team which is responsible for getting people to use our app and I also focus a little bit on our SEO strategy. So it's really opened me up to the world of tech and how large scale enterprise companies work which has been exhilarating. What have been your experiences in terms of the diversity? Not just at LinkedIn, but as you said, you've been in the valley now for about 10 months. What are some of the observations that you have made? Yeah, I think that a lot of the actual workforces are reflective of the actual diversity that's in the city and if you look at the city first of all, it's not very diverse and so it's kind of impossible for the organizations to have that same diversity. So it's been a challenge. I think that LinkedIn has done an incredible job given the fact that there are not equal amounts of multiple different demographics and I think LinkedIn is very conscious of the problem and we're actively working to solve it so I feel good about that. But I have noticed that in terms of gender, in terms of race, not everyone is represented on equal levels and representation is so important because for other people who are coming in future generations, you can't be what you can't see and so if there aren't people that look like you, you're going to be discouraged from pursuing an opportunity there when that opportunity might be perfect for you. So I'm really empowered and passionate about trying to increase representation for all people in these organizations. It's refreshing to be at a conference like WT squared because the accountability is so key and what they announced this morning with VMware investing $15 million into an innovation lab for women's leadership, the fact that they're together expanding the Stanford and VMware relationship that's been over the last five years but actively going to be looking at what are these barriers, the diversity barriers that women are facing, how do they identify optimal ways to eradicate those barriers because VMware knows and the McKinsey report that was actually cited in the press release that they went out with this morning, companies that have more diversity at the executive level are 21% more profitable. So they're understanding this is going to not just be benefiting our culture and diversity or our chief people officer HR function. This is actually something that will benefit the entire company and what does this company deliver? Technology that other businesses and people use to better our lives so they get that and that's saying refreshing is kind of an understatement but it really is nice to see companies that are willing to go, hey, we want to know exactly what these problems are so that we can then be strategic and how we can solve them. Exactly, it is refreshing and I think that more and more companies are realizing that diversity is not a luxury or just sort of a platitude, it's something that is intrinsic to the business and to the health of the business and the retention of employees and as more and more people begin to realize that I think we will get better at increasing representation down the line. You know I talked with a lot of women today and wanted to get their thoughts on the Me Too movement times up in the last six months that erupted on the scenes like unlikely alliance with Hollywood and the resounding opinions have been actually that's momentum that we can take advantage of. We should be leveraging this because when you have a platform that's that big and that global for an issue that affects every industry including us in technology that they actually saw that as kind of an elevation of the platform. I'm curious what your thoughts are about that. Yeah, I actually spoke about Me Too and a couple of other social movements in my talk earlier and you know one of the reasons I started my blog ThreadBread is because I started to realize this really unique cultural moment in which I've emerged into the workplace which has been characterized by these social movements and a lot of these social movements have been galvanized through social media. Social media has been able to bring so much attention to important issues and shift public perceptions and so with Me Too you know a movement that was founded by an African American woman in 2006 and then it sort of gained more momentum in 2017 when Alyssa Milano tweeted it out and then to have a month later Jackie Spear Congresswoman of California introduce the Me Too Congress Act you know changes happening at such a rapid pace more so than it ever has in the past so I'm really excited to be a part of that and I'm really excited that we are seeing this much progress on this rate so. We need to keep that going. We need to keep it going absolutely. Tell me a little bit more about ThreadBread. Yeah, so ThreadBread started in 2014 just as sort of a fun personal blog. My friends and I were getting our first internships the summer after our freshman year of college and we were all in different industries and couldn't really or didn't know where to go in terms of where to get advice about what to wear and of course like we wanted to make a good impression and so I started just creating outfits, dressing my friends up, telling them this is what you should wear when you go here or there and it sort of turned into this sort of personal branding as a young professional kind of blog and I started writing more about what are some of the experiences that young people have directly out of college? What are some of the things they wish they knew before they started their jobs and then I restarted it when I entered the work world now and because of what's happening in society I wanted to shift the attention to focus on these important social issues such as sort of women empowerment, the representation of underrepresented minorities and I've been able to have a lot of great dialogues with people that I know and people that I have just met who might have opinions that are different from me and I think those are the most interesting ones because they're the learning opportunities and so it's sort of transformed into this story space where we can consolidate information and learn from each other. I love that, you know one of the things that I thought was really cool when I walked into the event today was there's a headshot area and there's a LinkedIn, there's a resume writing clinic and a LinkedIn profile clinic as well and you kind of think those are really foundational pieces to help someone have a professional looking photo that doesn't have like somebody's arm that you've cropped out, right? Or you know a strong LinkedIn profile especially if you're young, maybe just finishing with school and don't have a ton of experience. Those are really important foundational elements and it sounds like what you've done with Threadbread to advise young people on how should you look professional. That's a really cool thing that you've done there. It's an area where you might think it's a small thing but I think that can be very impactful. Yeah it's kind of like the things that nobody tells you once you go in we're trying to capture all of that knowledge in one place and share it with as many people as possible. Yeah, so if you look down, finishing in the next what year or so to your program at LinkedIn what direction do you think you want to go in? Well I love LinkedIn because and when I interviewed I actually said that I was like the physical manifestation of LinkedIn. I am a networking person. I loved connecting people to opportunity and I love LinkedIn's message of trying to create economic opportunity for the global workforce and I think that it's really rare that you find a company that's for profit that also has this really social impacted mission and I want to stay in this space as long as possible but years down the line I could envision myself being an entrepreneur and starting my own company to focus specifically on problems affecting people of color and underrepresented people around the world. I think that that's what I've identified I'm passionate about and that's what I want to pursue. I can feel that from you so I think definitely entrepreneurial. Thank you. Kind of in summary, what are some of the things that you're going to be taking away from this third annual Women Transforming Technology? Absolutely, well from the keynote earlier this morning it's about sort of listening to the inner voice inside of you always finding that inner warrior as Leila Ali mentioned because I think that's so important. Life is about just having good days and then having days where you're encountering adversity and it doesn't matter how much adversity happens to you it matters how you respond to that and so always leaning into that inner voice and then using your voice to empower other women around you who might have similar experiences but who don't necessarily know how to navigate the same situations is where you can be most helpful so supporting women and always finding your inner strength is what I'm going to take away from today. I love that. I'm going to borrow that from you though it's fantastic. Well Caroline you're going to be a big star I can already tell. It's really nice to hear someone that's so young that sees the opportunities here and wants to very naturally make a difference tonight. You want to watch for sure. Thank you. Thanks for joining us. Thank you. You want to thank you. I'm Lisa Martin with the Q. We are on the ground at VMware at the third annual Women Transforming Technology event. Thanks for watching.